Engineers suspended for Noida Metro pillar crack

The Delhi Metro has suspended two of its engineers who had failed to detect the lapses in construction of a cantilever at Noida’s City Centre station.

Platform No. 1 at the station on the Noida-Dwarka line had to be shut down almost a week ago after the Delhi Metro officials found cracks in the cantilever on which the station rests.

On September 13, Delhi Metro managing director Mangu Singh appointed a committee of officials — Sahadeva Singh, chief project manager, Surya Prakash, chief general manager (civil) and AK Gupta, chief general manager (planning) — to find out what caused the cracks in the cantilever.

The inquiry was ordered after managing director Singh found a deflection in one of the cantilever arms of the station.

“The detailing of reinforcement as provided in the approved drawing has not been completely adhered to by the execution team of the contractor. And this aspect was also not verified by the DMRC engineer who failed to detect the lapses before allowing further casting of the cantilever. Therefore, the managing director has ordered the suspension of two engineers,” said Anuj Dayal, spokesperson of the Delhi Metro.

The Delhi Metro is likely to take legal action against the contractor, Gammon India Ltd, which was responsible for ensuring work as per plans, said officials.

“Suspended executive engineers had been working as junior engineer and assistant engineer at the time of construction of this cantilever in 2008. Disciplinary action against two engineers will be taken according to norms,” said Dayal.

The frequency of trains has been reduced since the repair work began. Only two trains make rounds of the stations in an hour nowadays, as opposed to six earlier. About 1,70,000 daily passengers, who use Noida’s six Metro stations, have been inconvenienced because of the lowered speeds of trains in the wake of the repair work.

Waiting time for Metro trains have also gone up to 20-30 minutes against the earlier five minutes, leading to heavy rush of passengers at stations, officials said.

“To ensure that this type of failure doesn’t happen again in the construction monitoring methodology, the Delhi Metro has ordered that in the future, before any concreting is done in such cases, photographic evidence of the material used should be kept on the record to reinforce the checking process,” said Dayal.

“Repair work will take another two weeks. There is no need to shutdown the Metro station. If we must do so, we will issue a public notice before that. But we hope cracks will be repaired in the next two weeks,” said the Delhi Metro spokesperson.